Fields of Research

Field: 2 - Political participation and mobilization

Lead by: Sandrine Perrot and Hélène Combes

Primary members: Jean-Philippe Béjà, Hélène Combes, Olivier Dabène, Stéphanie Latte, Marc Lazar, Sandrine Perrot, Jacques Rupnik

Secondary members: Claire Andrieu, Richard Banégas, Samy Cohen, Laurent Gayer, Riva Kastoryano, Denis Lacorne, Stéphane Lacroix, Hélène Le Bail, Elise Massicard, David Recondo, Jean-Louis Rocca, Kathy Rousselet  

This field gathers CERI researchers interested in “classical” debates on political participation (vote, activism, mobilization) while putting them to the test of new fields, far from the comfort zone of Western countries. This new perspective allows for a questioning of the classical debates and themes and refuses a normative vision of what should be the legitimate forms of political and social participation, preferring an empirical perspective and the analysis of practices. The projects included in this Field join in their will to develop comparative studies, both in time and space. In return, they provincialize theoretical systems or apparatus that have been built based on European or North American cases, often showing their singularities.

The activities corresponding to this Field are organized around two main themes of research:

• Mobilizations in the public space
• Revisiting the Act of Voting

Field: 4 - Violence and danger management

Lead by: Laurent Gayer and Sandrine Revet 

Primary members: Claire Andrieu, Adam Baczko, Didier Bigo, Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, Laurent Fourchard, Laurent Gayer, Benoit Pelopidas, Sandrine Revet, Jacques Semelin

Secondary members: Laurent Bonnefoy, Dominique Colas, Stéphanie Latte, Sandrine Perrot, Frédéric Ramel  

Social sciences sometimes seem unarmed faced to extreme crises. Beyond their diversity, be they wars, genocides, or any type of disasters or catastrophes (technological or natural), these crises present a common analytical challenge. How can logics of action, power relations and more generally a certain form of sociological coherence be reinjected into these moments of apparent disintegration of the social order? How can we reflect upon the social, the political or the economy when human or natural violence shake what was thought to be evident? The share of disorder specific to contemporary societies is not only limited to dealing with effective crises. In a more diffuse manner, it is visible through a series of dispositifs of prevention and security assemblages through which the state redeploys in front of new threats and populations who are pointed out as “at risk”. These are the themes on which this Field focuses, through research projects, groups working on “rationalities” of mass violence, the management of “natural” disasters, the contemporary forms of security or the making of politics during an armed conflict. A conceptual reflexion on the very notions of “violence”, “disaster”, “security”, “disorder”, “vulnerability” or “genocide”, among others has been done by the researchers who participate to this Field, in order to question their relevance, their usages and their limits. Two main themes structure research within this Field:

• Mass violence and extreme crises
• Security and Insecurity